{handmade pencil case} as a birthday gift!

I would love to take you through the little narrative of the gift and its opening ceremony!

I packed a gift in the cardboard box (that's baum-kuchen:). When he opened the lid, he saw a kraft paper with another small kraft paper on top.

On the small kraft paper, I wrote his favorite quote, "In Design, change is the only constant" using my typewriter. I used the backside of the same paper to write my birthday wish for him...

When he took the small kraft paper away, this was what the bottom kraft paper revealed.

Underneath the kraft paper, two pencil holders were packaged... showing different design stage of the gift. The left one with white linen is closer to the finished design! I consider these as prototypes because I would love to make the next version after seeing how it gets used. Who knows... if it's a functional product, some version of this might make it to our shop!

So here is the gift! A portable pencil holder made with a vintage (and reused) linen!

This is how the pencil holder looks when it's ready to be carried! I used a piece of vintage linen from an apron which was made by FB's mother many many years ago! I also rescued a patch of stenciled initial painted on the linen from the apron and turned it into a small pocket!

I could have machine sewed but instead I decided to hand stitch everything... I figured it would be more special:)

Through the process, I learned how to make a button holes by hand! Easy... but can be little time consuming. I pre-filled the pencil case with all kinds of interesting pencils I could find at an art store because a while ago FB told me that he wants to experiment with different media!!!

This was how my first paper prototyped looked! I figured out the basic dimension with this.